Born on the Edge of an Adjective
Neil didn’t know why, but he felt an irresistible urge to follow her. As if a string ran from his body and connected to hers, he followed. Good dog. When he stumbled out onto the street, he saw her blonde mane turning a corner. He dashed after her, his mouth presciently filled with her name.
“Margaret,” he shouted behind her, but she continued walking, all the way to Valencia, where she stopped in front of her two story Victorian, the bay window in her half, and turned to face him. Neil was wheezing from the fast pace he’d had to walk to keep up with her. Margaret, however, didn’t seem phased. She looked him up, and looked him down, as if assessing his value, another piece of antique furniture, a plate of blue china from the Far East, and said, “Welcome home, Neil.”
She held her hand out, palm up, and curled her fingers inward. Come here. Neil went to her, placed his hand in hers, and she closed her fingers over his. His hands were sweaty. Hers were cold and dry. Neil’s palms sweat when he’s nervous. His left eye twitches. Sometimes, when he can’t think of anything to say in a social situation, he’ll pretend to cough and look away.
Neil coughed.
“You don’t have to be nervous, darling,” she said. Can you believe it? Darling. As if he were a fifteen year old adolescent about to have sex for the first time. A regular Mrs. Robinson. “I know all about you,” she said, and began to lead him up the steps of the front porch. A wind chime hung over the entryway. The wind blew faintly. The chimes swayed without making any sound.
Margaret opened the door to her half of the Victorian and led Neil into the foyer. She took off his leather jacket; she unbuttoned his collar; she made him a gin and tonic, his favorite. Then they sat in her living room: hardwood floors, buffed and polished; wicker furniture, creaking under their weight. The smell, Neil told me, reminded him of craft stores, a little dried-up floral potpourri mixed with furniture polish.
“Listen, Neil,” she told him, “because I’m only going to tell you this once. You’ve been chosen. By me, of course. And what I’m about to offer is the chance of a lifetime. Of your lifetime, I mean. A human being’s lifetime, that is.”
Margaret proceeded to tell him about her alien status. She wasn’t from Mexico, though, as Neil immediately thought. Margaret hadn’t crossed any river; she hadn’t hidden herself away in some truck full of oranges. She had crossed the galaxy, and she and her people, she told him, had chosen humans to observe. People who could tell them something about humanity. Neil was Margaret’s baby. He’d made quite a splash with the others. Margaret extended an invitation for Neil to accompany her back to her home.
She was flattering. This is a necessary attractor. Neil was flattered, although this is something I’ve concluded on my own.
What was Neil thinking? I ask him, and he says, “Marco, I was thinking, what an opportunity. What an amazing woman. She could read my mind.”
“She can read your mind?”
“It was how she knew my name, how I knew hers.”
“So you can read her mind, too?”
“No, no, no,” Neil says, frustrated. “She can project her thoughts on me, as well. She gave me her name, before we even spoke.”
“Hmm.” I decide not to say anything.
Finally, Neil says, “I know you don’t believe me, but that’s so like you, Marco.”
“I never said I didn’t believe you.”
“I can tell you don’t.”
“What?” I say. “Are Margaret’s powers rubbing off on you? You can read my mind all the way from San Francisco? You could get rich that way, Neil.”
“I called you to say goodbye,” he says.
“Goodbye? Why?”
“Because we’re leaving. In a few days. I won’t see you again. Ever. It won’t be possible. If they fly me back, you and everyone else I know will be dead. The paradox of faster than light travel, you know. I wanted to tell you I love you, and goodbye. And to remember that line I gave you, which actually Margaret thought up.”
“What line?”
“I was born on the edge of an adjective, Neil. God, don’t you ever listen? Margaret told me that the other night. That’s who I am. I think it’s who you are, too. It’s who we are.”
